I got curious today to see just how much delay gets added by watching a live view image on my computer, versus watching the scene directly.

The answer, in my case, is 0.23-0.25 seconds. This is pretty small, but still big enough that it could be an issue when say shooting live stuff through a microscope.

Here's the setup to take the measurement. The digital watch is for precision; the spinning disk at 1 rps is to cover cases where the digits are hard to read.

The same experiment with analog video and HDMI showed that those were faster, both around 0.12-0.13 seconds.

It's hard to wrap this up into an overall number for equipment delay. I know from other tests (HERE) that Live View introduces some additional and unpredictable delay between trigger and actually taking the picture. And if I wanted to shoot with flash there would be additional delay for dropping out of Live View as required to trigger the flash. Things add up...

I love this language. I'm thinking that "amazing" here is the polite affectionate form of "obsessive".

What really happens is that I get curious about these technical issues and they nag at me until I know the answer. But then I know my memory isn't very good, so to keep from forgetting I write 'em up and post 'em out. If it contributes to the common cause, so much the better!

I wonder what is causing the delay? Is it certain that the camera is causing all of it? Would a faster PC and/or video card and/or video input/output interface subsystem(s) make any difference?_________________-Phil